Identifying Target Audience to Reach, Attract & Convert
The people who want to know about you – Your Target Audience
When you are trying to reach the right people you should also make sure you know who the right people are. In marketing terms they are called Target Audience. These are the people who are looking for solutions that match your products and services. You should know them as friends and like old mom and pop stores (kirana stores) used to know everyone – by name and even their profession and family.
Once you have identified your Target Audience you should make sure they find you on the search engine and social media.
Get on the Web Now
If you don’t have a website already, try and get one. Read the ‘Top Reasons why you should get a website. Put in all your information that is necessary. The business that you do, your location and your services. Once you’ve done that the next step in identifying target audience is to make sure you are registered with Google (the search engine). Google dominates the search world by having around 80% of all searches around the world done on its search engine. You can also register on Bing. Google Search Console is a great place to research the keywords your target audience is using. Google Analytics is another great place to get yourself on to so that you can analyse what’s happening with visitors on your website. But those are technicalities we can go to later. There are free tutorials on Youtube including ones by Google on how to take advantage of these tools.
Address your Customer’s Queries
Once you have your website up and running with all the information about your business don’t just stop there. Start adding answers to the questions your customers are looking for. For example – An essential oil company can add the different ways essential oils help in skin care or aromatherapy. Clothes and apparels’ companies can add what to wear on different occasions and stuff like that. I have already mentioned what Interior Design companies can do. Hope you have understood what I am saying. Websites like Quora, Amazon, Reddit are great places to find out what customers are looking for and their pain points.
Get a showcase that is open 24/7
Getting your own website is not really expensive, but many business owners worry that making and maintaining a website is expensive. Although it is not expensive, it certainly isn’t free. The question is, will you spend money as investment and get handsome returns or are you just another layman who doesn’t know how businesses work and think about saving money rather than earning return on investment and increasing business. Being on the web means you have an outlet that is working for you 24/7 and 365 days.
Read: How Create Buyer Persona
We are after all Social animals on Social Media
While people are searching for solutions on the search engines, there are people who are hanging out on social media to be in touch with their family and friends. Initially social media started as a place to keep in touch with near and dear ones who have moved away and cannot meet regularly. It has now become a place where some people practically live. Do you know there are over 2.6 billion monthly active users on Facebook and 1 billion on Instagram? Then there are other social media including Pinterest and LinkedIn. The people who interact here are bound to each other not only by relations, but also by interests. So if there are people who are interested in fashion or health or safe environments believe me they are hanging out together.
Social media algorithms (software running in the background watching everything you do online) match your interests and show you relevant information. You may have already noticed this on whatever social media platform you hangout on.
Most social media platforms allow you to make your own page. You could share information that you create on your website on these social media platforms. You could also create information directly on social media platforms. If you make these posts relevant and attractive they may be shared by people who like it and thereby increasing your reach.
Are you in the right room?
While sharing or creating information on any social media platform, you should take care to find out if your efforts are being spent in the right place. For example young people hangout on Instagram and Tik Tok. Older people on Facebook. People who are looking for education are searching for it on Youtube since watching videos is much easier than reading text. Some social media gurus will urge you to be on every platform. Which is OK, if you can do it. But with limited resources you should concentrate only on those platforms where the relevant audience hangs out.
Facebook – Although many young people hang out here, it is full of people over their 30s. People who hangout here like to see videos, love memes and do not mind reading some text – if it is relevant.
InstaGram – Young people who love sharing pics and videos.
LinkedIn – people who are looking to network to increase their reach professionally, hire or get hired.
YouTube – People who obviously like to watch videos. Youtube has everything under the sun – from entertainment to education.
Tik Tok – Youngsters who are sharing very short videos. In other words their attention spans are really short.
Twitter – Short messaging platform, where you can add images and videos.
WhatsApp – Popular chat platform where pics and videos can be shared.
Pinterest – image sharing platform which has become popular for infographics
Quora – a question answer forum which allows users to ask and answer questions.
There are many more such platforms.